Blustery Day, Past Year’s Losses Today is briefly warmer and blustery with high winds and rain, but it is more like a January thaw than the beige autumn Indian summer that we might normally expect. I don’t know that there is a clear sense of “normal” in our gardens anymore. Still, the patterns of the…
November
Season’s End
End of November will mean the final end of my growing season. There have been years I plant and do garden work in December and January, but it is a bit of madness really… and I don’t see that in my future at this point. So the end of my garden season, it is. I’m…
Symbols of Plenty
Earlier in the season I posted some pictures of gourds from a roadside stand. It seems like gourds are an icon of harvest and their colors and wildly varied shapes lend themselves to crafts and decorations.They are not hard to grow, my mother used to plant some in her postcard patch of garden and we…
Facing Winter
Today I faced up to the fact that I coddled myself instead of my plants. I had gathered together all my out door containers, and hubby and I stored them for winter in our garage. Unfortunately I didn’t save much from the container’s plants, despite my rosy plans earlier in the year. Instead, the nice…
Who Is Master?
Sometimes I think it is life, and its demands that master me, and not me in charge of my life. Do you ever feel that way? It was as I tried to compile my day’s list of garden task “to-do”s that it glared out at me: I was wishing I could just enjoy puttering away…
An Indian Summer Thanksgiving
The weather throughout this season has been so mild and with an end of surprising color. I see again why I planted goldflame spirea and even the maples in the field gave forth a deep oranged-yellow and long lasting display. I think we are often more thankful when taken by surprise with the gifts of…
Thanksgiving Time
Just a day away and I will start the cooking extravaganza tomorrow. It seems as though I plan and look ahead to the holidays, but they always arrive surprisingly quick, why is that? We warmed up this week, but are promised a drop in temperature over the holiday. With wet… not my favorite weather condition….
November Heats Up
…into the 40’s anyway. It has actually been very nice weather lately (for November, all things considered!). My daughter held a bonfire get-together with a few of her friends that had the right amount of briskness. With pleasant enough conditions to make some-mores and hot chocolate just the thing for a fun gathering, my husband…
Rural Observations 11/08
Even though most trees have lost their leaves, and without a good show of color, around here… for some reason the ones who held out ( or more precisely held onto) now are showing a surprising blaze of last color. Certainly it isn’t as effective as when the trees all color en masse, but it…
The Dark Side
Turning back the clocks has caused us to take note of turning toward the dark side of our seasons on this hemisphere. When I was @ Curves this evening the ladies were all talking about how dark it was already, and hoping it was just the effect of the storm clouds gathering. But no, we…